


A Very Cool Christmas AKA The Doctor Breaks Boilers

by duplicity



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Fluff, Holidays, Humor, Post-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, Romance, Rose bakes great cookies, Tentoo learns how normal people deal with the cold, The Doctor sulks, dw secret santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 12:31:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5456630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duplicity/pseuds/duplicity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the dwsecretsanta for @cooltennant on tumblr!<br/>Prompt: “the heating broke and it’s really cold now and i’m so sorry i can’t regulate my body temperature like i used to”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Very Cool Christmas AKA The Doctor Breaks Boilers

It is winter, it is freezing, and Rose’s blonde hair has frost on it as she shoves the front door open with her shoulder, swinging her bags around as she stomps into the entryway. “Doctor! I’m back!”

Rose gets a noise of muffled welcome in response. Still shivering, she kicks off her wet winter boots, trying to get some feeling back into her toes. Yanking off her mittens and tossing them on the side table, she pulls her blue coat off and hangs it up to dry. “Have you finished with the presents?” she calls out, making her way into the house with the shopping.

There’s an unreasonably tall stack of packages balanced precariously near the edge of the table as Rose looks into their kitchen. The Doctor is hard at work with the tape and wrapping paper, mainly evidenced by the bits and pieces that are fluttering all over the table and stuck in his unruly hair, but he looks up to beam at her as she comes in. A scrap of red, candy-cane patterned paper flies from his hair and lands on his nose as he does so, causing him to flick it off, his face scrunching in brief annoyance. He’s wearing the scarf she got him last Christmas, the colourful stripy one, wrapped three times around his neck and covering almost the entire lower half of his face. That was the muffled speaking explained, then, she thought wryly to herself.

“Look Rose, presents!” he says proudly, having pushed the scarf down enough to sound coherent.

“Yeah, I can see that, ta,” Rose replies, eyes scanning over the pile of ‘wrapped’ presents. Said pile consisted of one present total. Nonetheless, she smiles at him fondly and sets her purse on the counter along with the shopping. She pulled out the things that needed to go in the fridge, arranging them carefully next to the ingredients she had set aside earlier that day. “Why’s there only one?”

“Well, I kind of got sidetracked with the wrapping paper …” the Doctor begins apologetically, brown eyes widening as his tongue began to loll his words the way they did when he was uncertain. “It … got away from me, I think. Tricky stuff, that. Especially the cellotape.”

Carefully manoeuvring around the stack of unwrapped things, Rose eyes the pieces of discarded, failed gift wrapping resignedly. Lying next to the scissors, however, is a little paper chain of a Christmas trees. And next to that, she notes with some amount of nostalgia, is a little cut-out of the TARDIS. “Want some help then? We can finish together.”

“You mentioned biscuits earlier,” the Doctor begins, not really answering as his gaze flickers over to the freshly-filled fridge. “Banana biscuits.”

Rose sits down next to him. “You mentioned wrapped packages before I left,” she retorts, snorting at the pleading look on his face. “Presents first, then biscuits, alright?”

“Fine,” he huffs, fiddling with the tape momentarily before setting it down. Rose sees that half of the full roll he’d started with seems to have vanished.

Rose gathers up some of the paper scraps and wraps in them in a larger piece so they’ll be out of the way, then surveys the pile of presents at the opposite end of the table. “Is there an actual reason you decided to stack them all like that, or was it just for fun?”

“… If I said it was to save space would you believe me?”

“No.”

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“If only I had the sonic to make them finish faster,” the Doctor says mournfully. He is squatting in front of the stove door, the warm, orange-y glow of the elements reflecting off of his specs.

“Watched biscuits never bake,” Rose says off-handedly. Secretly she thinks he would probably end up blowing the stove with the sonic, but she isn’t going to say that. It had been best when the TARDIS had done the cooking during their travels. That way she hadn’t needed to worry about strange alien food side-effects. Or worry about the Doctor’s cooking. He cooked well enough when the food wasn’t Earth food (which was a rare enough occasion in itself), and when he was paying attention to what he was doing rather than trying to multi-task and do bunch of things at once, but he seemed to be very lost when it came to preparing anything that wasn’t tea.

The Doctor looks up at her, his eyes scanning her face as though to gauge how serious she is being. The warmth from the stove had added a pleasant hue to his cheeks, Rose notes with some affection. She gives him a reassuring smile and goes to tug him to his feet so she can plant a kiss on his lips. He kisses her back, his hand just as warm as she imagined on her back as his thumb rubs tiny circles on her spine. Her own hand snakes around his neck, and his lips part just for a moment before she pulls away, her eyes narrowing.

“You taste like bananas,” she accuses. “You didn’t eat any when I told you to add them to the bowl, did you?”

“No? Maybe. Maybe?” The Doctor turns worried eyes to the stove. “That doesn’t really make a difference, does it? One banana?”

“It doesn’t in biscuits with banana I guess,” Rose says. “They’re still biscuits. It just won’t taste as banana-like now, I suppose. Should’ve known better than to trust you with the bananas.”

The Doctor looks offended for a moment at the reproach. “I am completely trustworthy!”

Rose merely rolls her eyes in return. Then, as the Doctor looks as though he wants to resume his sentry post in front of the stove, Rose takes his hand in hers and drags him out. “Why don’t you see if you can turn the heating up, yeah? It’s still really cold in here.”

He perks up at the idea of the new assignment at once, making her a bit wary. “Fix it like I did last winter?” he questions.

Rose nods. “Yeah. It’s a little chilly.”

Last winter hadn’t been nearly as cold as this one seemed bent on becoming. They’d had been staying over at the Tyler mansion last year, and the Doctor had managed to fiddle with the heating to make it work faster or something, so that their room had warmed quickly to a comfortable temperature. Rose thinks of her poor wet boots by the door and sighs inwardly. At least as the Vitex heiress she didn’t have to worry about excessive heating costs, although she’d told Pete he didn’t have to pay for things anymore now that they’d gotten their feet under them.

“No problem, Rose Tyler. Just you wait: a couple of minutes of work and you’ll be warm in no time,” he says, beaming at her, seemingly pleased enough to be assigned with a task he could actually accomplish.

“Lookin’ forward to it,” Rose answers as he meanders away, ready to turn her attention to cleaning up the rest of the kitchen.

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The biscuits are cooling on the counter, their banana-scented steam rising towards the ceiling. Rose surveys them with a pleased smile when suddenly the lights overhead start to flicker. Rose pauses in the midst of taking her over mitts off for all of half a second before whipping them off and starting for the basement where the boiler and switch box are located. “Doctor? Are you alright?”

“Just fine!” She hears his voice call out as she stomps down the stairs. “Don’t worry! I’ve got this figured out–”

The lights stop flickering and Rose breathes a sigh of relief. She can see her Doctor from where he’s wedged behind some boxes, the beam of his torch wiggling around and casting moving shadows on the walls. “Alright! I’ll heat up the leftovers for dinner, so finish up in there before then or yours’ll go cold again,” she tells him.

“Alright!” he replies distractedly. “Sounds fine!” Rose hears the clank of metal and decides she’s better off upstairs where she doesn’t have to watch and worry. “Here we gooo …” is the last thing she hears him mutter before there’s an electrical short. The lights flicker pathetically for a few seconds before they all go out, leaving them both in the dark.

“Oops.” Rose carefully steps back into the basement to see the Doctor emerge, torch in one hand and a regular screwdriver in the other, a sheepish expression on his dirt-smudged face. “But I can fix it!” he adds hurriedly. “Don’t worry, Rose.”

The room already seems colder, Rose ruminates as she steps forward to examine the damage. The Doctor starts to ramble about what might have gone wrong, walking over to her and pulling his scarf off, shielding her from the view.

“What–” she starts, only for him to drape his scarf lovingly over her head. It settles onto her shoulders, and he smooths the soft, wooly fabric out. Rose can feel the leftover body heat seeping into her skin from the combination of the scarf and his hands.

“Can’t have you catching a cold while I fix this,” he says briefly, looking her directly in the eyes for an intimate moment before whirling back to his toolkit.

Rose stands there for a moment, watching the man she loves at work, an expression of fond exasperation on her face. Then she marches up to fetch another torch and an extra jumper, prepared to come back down and help him.

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Two hours and three layers later, Rose is munching on the not-really-banana biscuits as the Doctor kicks the boiler.

“Ow,” he complains, nursing his Converse-clad foot as he hops up and down.

“You said that the last time you kicked that ten minutes ago,” Rose points out. “Have ‘nother biscuit. We’re not gonna get this sorted out today; I’ll call dad or someone in the morning.”

“I can still fix it,” the Doctor insists, although he did not sound as enthusiastic as he had 120 minutes ago.

“You’ve been at it for ages, and all we’ve had to eat are biscuits.” Rose can see the flush of cold on his cheeks, even in the dim light. “And you haven’t even put on any more clothes. It’s freezin’. We’re going to the living room and I’m goin’ to warm you up.”

“Not cold,” he mutters stubbornly, but he snatches up another biscuit, cramming it into his mouth and following Rose up.

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“Why can’t I feel my fingers? They’re all … tingly!”

Rose has the Doctor’s hands clasped between both of her own, the two of them ensconced on the couch surrounded by a swath of blankets. “Because you’re a daft alien who’s never been properly cold before,” she tells him.

“Tingly,” he mutters again, staring at their hands. The Doctor looks up at her words. “I’ve been cold before! This … this is beyond  _hellish_ levels of cold, Rose. It’s not  _fair_. Why aren’t you cold?” he asks her accusingly.

“Because I went and put two extra jumpers on while you fiddled with the boiler. And I asked you if you wanted anything, remember?” she retorts, snuggling in closer to rest her chin on his shoulder. She can feels his shivers through all three of the thick layers she’s wearing. “Plus you gave me your scarf.”

The Doctor gives a pitiful sniff. “Rose, my nose is stuffy now.” He wiggles his fingers from in-between her hands for a moment before saying, “I should go and try to fix the heating again. And the electricity.” His legs shift restlessly under the pile of blankets, exposing sock-clad feet. He’d abandoned his Converse in favour of tucking his toes in-between the couch cushions.

“Don’t be an idiot. You’re already freezin’. You’d just catch a cold down there,” Rose says. She mulls over their situation for a moment before hesitantly suggesting: “Maybe we can call a cabbie and go to the mansion.”

“No!” The Doctor protests, his whole body jerking away from her as far as the blankets would allow, horror etched on his face. He was quite obviously thinking of Jackie. “I’ll freeze to death before we do that.” After settling back down for a moment, he heaves a weary sigh. “I’m not very good at this domestic stuff, am I? Wrapping presents and baking.”

“The Doctor bakes?” Rose quips with a cheeky grin, her tongue poking out between her teeth.

“The Doctor breaks boilers,” he replies resignedly, shuffling a little.

Rose shakes her head. “I bet you’re sorry you can’t regulate your body temperature like you used to. ‘superior Time Lord physiology’ and all that,” she teases, trying to lighten the mood. She leans into him, rubbing their hands together. They’re a little warmer now, she thinks idly. Perhaps she should have gotten him mittens. That would be a laugh. She could make him put them on whenever he had the urge to fiddle with things that shouldn’t be fiddled with.

“It was good while it lasted,” the Doctor admits wistfully, removing his hands from hers so he can pull her partly onto his lap. “Buuuut, I like being human, too. With you.” He nudges her with his shoulder, a tiny smile tilting the corners of his lips.

“I like you bein’ here, too,” Rose smiles right back, her head tilting back against his shoulder.

They fall quiet, save for the occasional fidget from the Doctor or soft hum from Rose. From beneath their nest of quilts, Rose starts to feel quite cosy nestled up against her Doctor.

“Rose?”

“Yeah?”

“We don’t happen to have any more bananas, do we?”

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They end up calling Jake Simmons over to fix the boiler the next morning.

The Doctor is sitting on the kitchen counter as Rose wraps up some of the remaining biscuits as a thank-you gift, his legs swinging. She ties off the top of the clear bag with a festive red ribbon, using her fingernail to scrape along the length of it to make the ends curl. Satisfied, she sets it aside and turns to lean on the counter across from the Doctor.

“We’ll make some more later,” the Doctor says decisively, although Rose isn’t sure if he’s talking to her or to himself.

“No more bananas,” she reminds him nonetheless. “What we didn’t use up yesterday you went n’ ate.”

“Right. Bananas.” He frowns, brow furrowed in consternation. “We should have asked Simmons to buy us some on his way here.”

“He’s not a delivery boy,” Rose says matter-of-factly. “And he was nice enough to come fix things for us.”

“After he’s done I’ll put it to rights,” he adds in response. “Turn the heat up the way you wanted.”

Rose almost wants to protest, but says nothing. She’s still wearing his scarf, so she pulls it off and goes to drape it around his neck, dragging him close with a sashay of her hips. “I think they’re other ways we could turn up the heat,” she says suggestively, giving her Doctor a tongue-touched smile.

“Oh?” The Doctor seems momentarily confused for a moment, Rose patiently watching the gears turn in his head until– “ _Oh_.”

“Yeah,” she breathes, pulling him in. “ _Oh_.” 

FIN


End file.
